by Martha Carr
“Walking the same strip over and over again? Yeah, I noticed.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not the same strip. Which you would’ve realized if you’d bothered to take another look around.”
Once he’d said that, she noticed Q3 was different from Q1 and Q2. Cheyenne stared at the colorful buildings stretching in long rows toward the edge of the cliff. Brightly-colored banners were strung between the buildings, and magicals of all different shades and sizes milled around, strutting down the avenues, talking to their neighbors, standing in doorways, and calling to each other. None of them wore black fatigues, and none seemed to notice the FRoE operative and the Goth chick strolling down what was now a paved sidewalk rather than dirt tamped down by many countless boots.
That or they don’t want to acknowledge us. We look like a couple of humans who popped into a magical marketplace. Yeah, that’s what this is.
A complicated drumbeat from what sounded like at least four different types of drums came from one row of colorful buildings.
“Okay, so what’s Q3 supposed to be?”
“The marketplace.” Rhynehart nodded toward the third row they passed. A female orc in a tan leather skirt carried a basket of something that looked like purple grapefruits and roared with laughter. “Every Q3 on every compound that I know of has a marketplace.”
“You ever walk down one of those rows and check out the merchandise?” Cheyenne grinned at the thought of Rhynehart inspecting the table of finely woven rugs in bright colors spilling out of one of the shop’s front porches beneath the striped yellow and purple awning.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Uh, curiosity, maybe?”
“Yeah, I’m not paid to be that kinda curious.” Rhynehart shook his head and kept walking. “On every rez, the way in and out is through Q1 and the gate. Or whatever the rez council sets up in place of a gate. Some have a stone wall, some have giant elevator doors that turn on a crank. You get the picture.”
“Seen any portcullises?”
The man stopped and gave her a weird look.
Cheyenne fought hard not to laugh. “Apparently not.”
“While all the quarters look the same, and they’re all powered by those weird portal tower things, there’s one way on and off the rez. Don’t ask me what happens if we hop out of this magical bubble back toward the Jeep. I’m not stupid enough to find out, so I can’t tell you.”
The drow halfling glanced at Rhynehart’s black Jeep, which was parked precisely where they’d left it at the end of the dirt frontage road, and kept walking beside him.
“Once the Accord was formed and agreed upon, the major changes to the reservations happened in Q1 and Q2. Some people think the magicals over here before the Accord had already set up something like what we’ve got now. Security, military, correctional facilities—all that good stuff in Q1.”
“Wait, the rez has its own jail?”
“More like a prison. Medium security. But yeah. Then Q2 has everything you saw here, pretty much across the board. By the time we came into the picture and got our hands on the first two rez quarters, they were a mess. I don’t know if the magicals here had given up trying to update their assimilation protocol or what, but we had our work cut out for us.”
“You’re talking about the FRoE?”
“And the rookie puts all the pieces together.” Rhynehart scoffed. “Didn’t take you as long as I thought it would.”
Cheyenne stuck her hands in the back pockets of her tight black jeans, wishing she didn’t have that stupid burner flip phone in one. “You need to work on your compliments.”
“That wasn’t a compliment, but whatever makes you feel good.” The man jerked a thumb toward the last two rows of colorful marketplace buildings as they reached the end of the line on the west side of Q3. “As far as I know, Q3 and Q4 haven’t changed much since they were set up. We got the marketplace here, yeah? So take a guess, rookie. What are we gonna find on the other side of this magical wall?”
Rhynehart didn’t stop to wait for her answer. He strode to the edge of the tree line and disappeared.
Cheyenne stopped and gave herself a moment to take a closer look at the marketplace. Sure, some of the magicals here wore jeans and cotton sweatshirts and dresses. Most of them, though, looked like they’d come from somewhere else—which they had. Long skirts in bright patterns, corded robes on some of the males, feathers and beads, and larger pieces of jewelry that people on this side of the Border wore in overly eccentric fashion shows.
They look happy. I guess that’s why they came here in the first place.
A round of raucous laughter rose from a group of two orcs, a troll, and a short, squat goblin with a bright-red top hat almost half his height. One of the orcs smashed a tankard of what smelled like beer and honey—the scent traveled on the breeze to the half-drow’s heightened senses—against the goblin’s smaller mug and clapped the shorter magical on the back.
Yeah, that looks happy to me. Definitely not how I’ve seen orcs and goblins before.
Cheyenne walked toward the tree line, still watching the magicals gathered around in this colorful marketplace on the edge of a cliff in the middle of nowhere, Maryland. A female troll in a patterned dress of purple and red with two long, dark-purple braids wrapped in turquoise bindings hanging down her back lifted a shiny copper bowl toward the half-drow and nodded. The small smile on her violet lips made Cheyenne’s stomach flip.
She raised a hand toward the troll in a brief greeting, then moved forward through the next magical wall and into Q4…right back where they’d started on the south end of a different quarter. There was the tower ahead on her right again, the frontage road, the black Jeep ahead on her left.
Several feet away, a scowling Rhynehart waited with his arms folded. “Find anything interesting back there?”
“I was looking—”
“Don’t make me wait for you like that again. Got it?”
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes at him. “What? For thirty stupid seconds?”
“You’re not here to check things out, rookie. You’re not here to make friends or fraternize with the locals. You’re not here to do anything but what I tell you. We’re not gonna have a problem with that, are we?”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“Shut up and keep walking.” Rhynehart spun on his heel and stomped off across the ground, which was now covered in a lush, healthy layer of green grass.
“Hey! You were the one who disappeared after asking me a question, jerk. Do you know how rude that is?”
“It’s not my job to be polite, halfling.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not my job to take shit from you. None of this is my job. You people kidnapped me—”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Rhynehart whirled toward her and stuck a finger in her face. “We kidnapped you from a high-level sting operation you almost blew because you couldn’t mind your own business. We took care of a wounded halfling who doesn’t know the first thing about being a halfling, brought her to our base, patched her up, gave her an opportunity to prove to us she can be more than a giant pain in my ass. So start treating this like a real job, Blakely, and pretty fucking soon, too. ‘Cause I have everything I need right here in this reservation to toss your ass across that Border and into a whole new world more fucked up than you can imagine. And you wouldn’t last longer than five minutes. Don’t make me wait for you again.”
The man’s blue eyes bored into Cheyenne’s. She leaned away from him, so she didn’t have to smell the wintergreen gum on his breath. “You done?”
Huffing out a breath, Rhynehart dropped his hand and turned away from her. “Keep up.”
Somebody crawled up his ass about keeping me around. I bet it was Sir. This guy knows he’s walking a fine line with me anyway. Okay, Cheyenne. There’s more to learn from these people. Don’t give them a reason to think you’re angling to find something. Play the little rookie.
Chapter Twenty
The
space they’d walked across three times now looked different than the other quarters. Short, squat houses spread across the entire area. Some of them had neat yards and flowers growing in well-tended gardens; others were plain with no personal touches. All of them had narrow walkways leading to the front doors, and while they were arranged in something like a neighborhood block, thick green grass blanketed the space between the houses. Trees sprouted here and there to break up the monotony.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Rhynehart muttered as they made their way across the final quarter.
“Q4’s residential. Obviously.”
“There you go. The whole general breakdown of every single Border reservation on this side. Hell, I don’t know if they have ‘em on the other side, but I don’t care.”
“How many people live here?” Cheyenne peered into the yard of the closest house, where two small green orc children played with a bubble wand, the barest hint of tusks protruding from behind their lower lips. Their laughter made her smile despite the chewing-out she’d gotten two minutes before.
“It varies year to year. Once they’ve been cleared, some magicals branch off into human society if that’s what they want. We’ve got more coming over all the time, but the Border crossings are a lot more regulated now than they used to be. Most of the magicals who get one of these plots as their own stay forever, I guess. Roughly two hundred families.”
Cheyenne grinned at the little orc boy waving the bubble wand through the air. He snarled at her, and his mom clapped from where she sat in a lawn chair in front of the house. The orc boy shot the drow halfling an apologetic smile and waved while his little sister wobbled after the bubbles floating around her. “Most magicals have gone no farther into our world than this?”
“Pretty much.” Rhynehart tipped his head toward the sky and took a deep breath. “Not a bad place to spend the rest of one’s life as a refugee. Plenty of friends. Nice ocean view. Your own little cookie-cutter house.”
“What about the magicals who leave?”
“What about them?”
Cheyenne hurried to catch up with Rhynehart as he turned down a row two houses away from the edge of the tree line. “If somebody comes through and leaves the reservation, can they come back?”
“Huh.” Rhynehart rubbed his chin and shrugged. “I guess if they wanted it enough. That’d be one hell of a headache with the paperwork. Might have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Why, halfling? You thinking you might wanna get your own little plot?”
The drow halfling rolled her eyes. “Nope. I’m good.”
I’d never hear the end of it from Mom if she learned I’d found a magical commune at the edge of the ocean. Maybe I’d never hear from her again. Wouldn’t have enough space or power for Glen and all my tech gear, anyway.
The farther they walked, the quieter things got. Cheyenne noticed the houses in the northeast corner of Q4 weren’t occupied. They’d already passed beyond the shadow of the massive black tower, and while there were hardly any clouds and nothing to cast another shadow over them, the space they were headed seemed to grow darker, and the birds stopped singing.
“Did it get dark and creepy, or is it my imagination?”
Rhynehart stopped in front of an empty house, glancing between the buildings with a cautious frown. “Not you.”
Cheyenne checked the sky, which hadn’t been filled with heavy rainclouds but now seemed gray enough to threaten rain. “Who are we sitting down to have a chat with?”
“More of a stern warning. Probably not a lot of talking involved, unless the guy’s feeling chatty. He normally isn’t.” Rhynehart tugged the thick dampening gloves onto his hands, then rested one hand on the weapon at his hip, perhaps to reassure himself he wasn’t walking unarmed into a tense situation.
“Hey,” Cheyenne said.
Rhynehart turned to look at her.
“What does he do?”
“Black magic. At least, that’s what all the reports point to.”
“Black?”
“Yeah, Blakely. The dark stuff. Super powerful, pretty deadly, highly illegal on both sides of the Border. The kind he’s gotten himself into, anyway. Nasty stuff.”
“And they sent a human FRoE operative to take care of him.” Cheyenne folded her arms and frowned at the guy.
“And a drow. Right?” Rhynehart’s attempted smile didn’t get across his attempt at lightheartedness. “Fine. Half-drow. Whatever. Good enough for us.”
“You want me to handle a black-magic practitioner who boobytraps his house on a Border Reservation. Did you guys stop to think about how many holes are in that plan?”
“Yep. Two seconds ago. You can handle it, halfling. You almost took down an ogre last Thursday. Almost, but still. Short of a fell cannon, that’s the closest I’ve seen anyone get.”
“Wow.” Cheyenne raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “What’s the rest of this last-minute plan?”
“Well, here’s what I’m thinking. The guy’s house is at the far corner back there.” Rhynehart nodded at the northeast end of Q4 closest to the tree line and the edge of the cliffs. “We head over there. You help me find the aforementioned boobytraps, so we don’t get our arms melted off, then I tell the guy to come with me so we can take him back to 38-Q1 and book him.”
Cheyenne blinked and widened her eyes at the FRoE operative. “I have a feeling anybody who’s made everyone else move out of these houses and the sky turn dark isn’t gonna come quietly so you can book him on the reservation where he lives.”
“We share the same feeling, rookie. That’s where you come in.”
She stared at him, then turned her head away from the guy in disbelief. “Were you assuming I have oodles of experience fighting black magic?”
Rhynehart shrugged. “Fighting with it, maybe.”
“What?”
“Come on, Blakely. You’ve seen what comes out of your hands. That’s some scary shit.”
“That’s drow magic.” Cheyenne stepped back. “I don’t make the sky turn dark, and I haven’t ever hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. And I haven’t hurt anyone badly enough to make the FRoE come after me so they can lock me up.”
“Well, not yet.”
“Okay, asshole. Deal’s off.” The drow halfling headed back down the rows of houses toward where she hoped she’d find normal sunshine and air she could breathe. “I’ll walk my way back across this strip of land four more times. Don’t feel like you need to escort me or anything.”
“Blakely. Hey, hold on.” Rhynehart glanced behind him in the direction they’d been heading, then jogged after the halfling storming away from him. “Wait. Please.”
Cheyenne gritted her teeth.
Now he starts using manners.
She stopped and exhaled a massive sigh, but she didn’t turn around. It made her feel slightly better when Rhynehart jogged around her and stopped in front of her again.
“Look, I’m not into…I don’t know.”
“Asking for help? Asking if I’m willing to do this? Not treating me like I’m some idiot who signed up for FRoE academy and can’t contain my excitement that you’d let me come with you on a ‘real mission?’” Cheyenne’s fake eager grin came out as more of a snarl, and she felt heat flare at the base of her spine.
Wouldn’t be such a bad thing to unleash some drow hell on this moron. Black magic, my ass.
Rhynehart glanced at her clenched fists and raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead. We’re gonna need that anyway. Let it out.”
“You don’t get to tell me when I ‘let it out.’ That isn’t part of the deal, and that will never be your call—or anyone else’s.” The halfling turned an image of a green, peaceful forest over and over in her mind. And the deer. The deer work.
“You’re right.” The man raised both gloved hands in surrender and took two steps back. “Your magic, your call. I was trying to be helpful.”
“Well, cut it out. You suck at being helpful.”
They stared at each
other, then Rhynehart chuckled with a crooked smile and glanced at his boots. The grass beneath them had taken on a gray pall this close to their intended target. “Look, you’re the only magical we know of right now who’s remotely capable of fighting off the kind of nasty stuff this guy’s been whipping up in his little private lab, okay? He calls himself Q’orr. Ever heard of him?”
“Nope.”
Rhynehart cocked his head. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best. Listen, this guy’s been experimenting with all kinds of dark shit that’s been banned on the other side since before he came through. We don’t screen the magicals coming across the Border. That’s impossible. So we deal with the ones who make it to this side, and we have to clear those who fill out an application to move off the rez and enter the rest of society, blah, blah, blah. Point is, this Q’orr guy didn’t get cleared. After three different applications over the course of…I don’t know, ten years. Twelve, maybe. He’s got too many screws loose, and he’s been getting worse. Last few reports we got, the asshole found a way to smuggle dangerous potions and whatever the hell else he’s brewing off the rez and into town. Mostly Richmond and D.C., right? Some of his stuff has made it all the way to Philly. Don’t ask me how it works, but there’s some kinda magical signature that traces this idiot’s product back to him like a fingerprint. Sometimes easier than that. So, we know it’s him. And he doesn’t plan to stop.”
Cheyenne studied the man’s distress and took another deep breath. “What’s he smuggling out of here?”
“Black-magic potions. Whoever he’s got selling the stuff for him, they’re taking ‘magical scumbags’ to a whole new level. Marketing the crap as ‘power enhancers’ or something. Better skills. Stronger magic. Whatever. You know who they’re targeting with this? Kids, Blakely. Magical kids who’ve probably been on this side of the Border their entire lives and don’t know any better. We got reports of three more in the last week who turned up dead ‘cause they couldn’t help themselves with the tempting lie of becoming as powerful as whoever the hell takes the blue ribbon for the strongest magical in their world. They think this shit will turn them into their heroes, and it’s killing ‘em.”